![inmates.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmREbg71j9KdU6euyMBwCxhi4G25HTDfpQ7SX7aNmi546T/inmates.jpg)
(Image from Getty Images)

I'm posting up the chapters of this uncompleted book as I hope the Steemit community might offer up its criticism (which would, in turn, force me to finish it, honestly). Started in 2008, this was my first foray into novel writing and was my undergraduate thesis required to graduate. The story is about an executioner in the not-too-distant future. Executioners are highly trained individuals with extensive educations built to help them execute their prisoners in the exact same manner that the prisoner's victims died. This is called the law of retaliation or _lex talionis_; you may know it better as "eye for an eye."

Because I was also getting my degree in philosophy, I wanted to explore the ethics involved. While I feel I'm a better writer now and could certainly expand most of this book, I also really enjoy criticism as I'm usually too close to the work to see what's working and what's not (though in this case, there's plenty that I feel is not working). So please...feel free to criticize the work if you'd like, but be constructive about it. Simply saying "this part isn't good" doesn't tell me much; don't hesitate to tell me why it's not good or offer up possible alternatives to make it better.

Thanks in advance!

***

Previous Sections/Chapters:

_Part I_
[Chapter One](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-1) / [Two](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-2) / [Three](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-3) / [Four](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/tgjcj-the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-4) / [Five](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-chapter-5) / [Six](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-6) / 
[Seven](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-7) / [Eight](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-8) / [Nine](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-9) / [Ten](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-10) / [Eleven](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-11) / [Twelve](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-12) / 
[Thirteen](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-13) / [Fourteen](https://steemit.com/writing/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-14) / [Fifteen](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-15) / [Sixteen](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-i-chapter-16-the-end-of-part-i)

_Part II_
[Chapter One](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-11) / [Two](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-2) / [Three](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-3) / [Four](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-4) / [Five](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-5) / [Six](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-6) / [Seven](https://steemit.com/fiction/@bucho/the-bulwark-s-shadow-a-novel-in-progress-via-steemit-part-ii-chapter-7)

***

I had no true family when I came to prison. My mother had left us when I was too young to remember and my father eventually did the same, leaving me with relatives the year I started Kindergarten. I didn’t have a bad home life living with my uncle and aunt, but they were much older than my mother or father had been. Uncle Gary suffered from heart problems, but refused to stay home from his job at the law firm. Sure enough, one day in court during a cross-examination, his heart had said enough and took him down right there. I was pulled out of class that day and found myself queerly unemotional. 

Aunt Belle buried him in the suit he died in, saying it had always been his favorite. ‘He looks regal in that silver pinstripe,’ she kept saying at the wake. Everyone would nod and offer condolences as she stood there for hours, waiting for the visiting line to diminish. The smell of the lilies around the room still finds its way into my thoughts as if their long, white petals held his essence within them. 
	
Two years later, Aunt Belle had met John, a banker from the city who had moved to the outer suburbs looking for some quiet. By that time, I was taking classes at the junior college and my visits were sparse, so I never got to know him as well as I should have. They took a holiday that following summer and she caught pneumonia while traversing the Bolivian countryside. Her body wasn’t as immune as it was in her younger days and she was hospitalized for weeks while John tried to get some kind of help from the American Embassy. Failed attempt after failed attempt left him holding her hand in a foreign hospital as she exhaled one last whisper through weakened lungs. John emptied his bank account just so she could be sent home for a proper burial and I’m not sure if he ever left Bolivia. I didn’t know him well, but I had a great deal of respect for him after that. 
	
I floated around for a few years afterwards, checking out different parts of the country until I found myself here on the East coast. With no real familial attachments anywhere (that I knew of), traveling until something felt right seemed the logical choice. I was the kid in school you don’t remember because I was average in every way. Never had a problem with acne, never got picked on, but I never paid attention in class either. By the same token, I didn’t really have many friends and I was content with this. Aunt Belle and Uncle Gary worried for awhile, but then realized I handled myself just fine with other people, I simply chose not to involve myself with others. If they saw me now, they’d likely beat themselves up wondering where they went wrong. Sad as it is, they were better parents to me than my birth parents in so many ways and I don’t think they ever saw it that way. 
	
Jim and I bonded quickly and unexpectedly when he showed up. His first day here, he walked into the caf with a bit of a smirk and seemed not at all affected by his new surroundings. At a stout 5’5”, he wore his jet black hair short and his eyes always had that inkling of mischief behind them. He had a penchant for barking louder than his bite, but that was down here. Topside, he was one of five “body men” for a small time Mafioso and found that he enjoyed sending people to the hospital. Doubly dangerous was the fact that he had passed the bar exams throughout every New England state. He was walking C4 with the brains to match and that made him a scary acquisition for the Mafioso. 

He wasn’t naturally smart, he explained one day. “I was forced to work for what I wanted. I was doing your average kid jobs like delivering newspapers to newsstands and making the odd deliveries for the grocery store, that kinda thing. Then one day some kids from my foster home ran me down after a shift at the grocery store. Chased me into an alleyway I thought was a shortcut. Got beat up pretty good; one black eye, a missing tooth and some serious bruises all over,” he said, motioning his hand over both arms and across his chest. “Finally got my footing and stood with my back to the wall and the three guys closing in on me. Then a group of older men turned the corner and I thought I was a goner. Thought the older guys were there to help kick my ass,” he grinned. “I mean, they were wearing nice suits, ya know?”
	
The three guys happened to be Franco Sauzo and his cousins, out surveying the neighborhood they had just moved a business into. “I was 15 and quick to learn. They watched as I stood up to three bigger guys despite the obvious ass kicking I was about to receive and stepped in. Told me they needed someone with balls after they chased off my foster ‘brothers.’ Got a gig running small errands for Sauzo and he paid me well. When I turned twenty-one, I told him I wanted to take a break from working so I could go to school and he asked me what for. I said I didn’t know, just that I felt I needed something else and he said I should seriously think about Pre-Law. I did, enjoyed it. Hell, I damn near excelled at it,” he said wistfully. “You shoulda seen me in court, some of those days. I was really somethin’.”
	
Eventually Sauzo hired him as legal counsel for the personal and the public businesses. Once the business ventures expanded to the North and South of New York, he boned up on each state’s laws and found himself spending most of the year in the home office, newly moved to Raleigh. “I didn’t have any body men down there with me one weekend. They were all in Manhattan celebrating the Don’s birthday and the home office got broken into. I knew who did it though,” he said with a nod. “And I handled it. I had no qualms with it. Don Sauzo had taken care of me for too long for me to just sit back and not retaliate. I called the closest body guys around, the ones opening up a new branch of the export company in West Virginia. We found the three guys responsible, knocked’em around a bit, put’em in a car, locked it, set the fucker on fire.” 
	
An empty look clouded his face. “We duct-taped these assholes to the seats inside and somehow my finger print was the only one found on the smallest stitch of tape. The family expected me to roll or plea out, but I took the brunt of it and never snitched. Prosecutor called me a liar on the stand. When I told him I’d be more than happy to give him a personal demonstration in the parking lot after my testimony, I could hear the boys chuckling quietly in the back of the courtroom. I locked eyes with the Don. He nodded and smiled at me, then he and the crew left. I knew I had nothing to worry about down here other than my actual last day. That’s why I’m smilin’ so much. I worked my ass off topside, but down here it’s smooth sailing. How many other cats you know can say the same thing?”
	
“None,” I replied.
	
“Fuckin’ A.”

***
	
Reitman ended up bailing on the the Gin Rummy game, so it had been a quiet one when Panzer walked, or rather barely limped, into the common area. He tried to hide it, but we could see it. “Hey guys,” he muttered. 
	
“The fuck you been?” Jim asked. “And why are you limping? Did you hurt yourself or did someone get a hold of you in the shower?” he asked, laughing at his own joke. No one else joined in. “Ahhh, c’mon you guys. It’s just jokes,” he pleaded.
	
“I got put in solitary. They kept trying to ask me who was in charge of the riot. I kept telling them I didn’t know because I was in J’s cell with him when it all went down,” he said, slumping into the free chair around the bolted down table. 
	
“Of course you were. You just stood there with that thing in your hand. You weren’t fighting at all,” I chimed in.
	
“That’s what I said, but two of them claimed they saw me use it on some of the other prisoners, which I said was a complete fabrication. I told them that the only time I got involved in the skirmish was when I pulled Ridsy out of the mass of bodies, but they didn’t buy it. Any answer I gave that they didn’t like, I got a bit of physical punishment for.” He lifted his tunic top and we could see the blackish purple spots everywhere, a slashing of oblong, infected chicken pox strewn across his skin. 
	
Jim threw his cards down on the table hard enough to send several of them over the far edge and stood up. “Who the fuck did this, Panzer. Point’em out and I swear to Christ himself I’ll handle it.” His fists had balled up and a rosy pallor tinted his cheeks. It wasn’t often that Jim let his temper get the best of him, but it was always obvious why Don Sauzo handpicked him. 

“No,” Panzer replied quietly. “It’s not worth it, Jim. Besides, I was trained to withstand much worse,” he said with a pained smile. “This was tamer than boot camp.”
	
“Fuck that. I won’t do it as a revenge favor for a friend, I’ll do it just to do it,” Jim shot back. 
	
“Sit down and pick up your cards, Jim. If Panzer can shake it off, so can you,” I said calmly. “We don’t have to like it, but if we retaliate, we’re no better than them.”
	
“Fuck you and your cards then,” he shouted, pointing a finger in my face. “Doesn’t that piss you off? I mean, you of all people know he didn’t have anything to do with the riot. Hell, I didn’t even see him after lunch and I could without question say he wasn’t involved. Doesn’t that piss you off at all, you serene sonofabitch?”
	
“Of course it angers me, but again, what would you getting back at the guards do? It doesn’t remove his bruising, it doesn’t change anything and Panzer’s right back here with us where he should be as opposed to being stuck in solitary still. The bruises will heal and Panzer’s already moved on, we should too. Now pick up your damn cards.” My patience was starting to wane and I wasn’t sure if I was more angry at Jim for that or for the fact that he figured a retaliatory beat down was actually a good idea down here. I picked up my cards and feigned concentration on the hand as Jim swept his fingers across the table, sending the cards onto the floor, and stormed out of the common area. 
	
I sighed, laying my cards down on the table and began picking up the mess. “Good to have you back,” I said to Panzer, who sat wincing and trying to find a comfortable sitting position. “I’m sorry it had to go down like that.”
	
He shrugged. “If not me, then someone else. That’s the way it goes, man. At least I can take it better than most.”
	
“Still…”
	
“Yeah. I know, man, I know,” he replied as he leaned his head back against the headrest. “Did I miss anything while I was gone?”
	
I snorted as I shuffled the cards reflexively. “Not so much. The entire prison went into lockdown for a week, save for me and some other random guy in the lunchroom. He wasn’t much of a talker, so it was a long seven days of quiet lunches and dinners.”
	
“Ah.” 
	
We sat there not talking for awhile and I was pretty sure Panzer had dozed off when he sat up and stared at me. “So, you’re not big on revenge beatings, eh?” he asked, smiling.
	
“I can’t find a way to justify them, pal. I’m of the mindset that what we do in this earthly existence finds its way back to us, whether it be this lifetime or the next or the next after that. Better to act right in the now than pay for it in the later.” The doorway at the far end of the common room darkened as two guards stepped through and stood sentry. Common room time was over and we took our time getting back to our cells, walking in silence through the dim hallways.